You can either purchase a new license or migrate your existing licenses through Software Assurance. Businesses who have a Microsoft Volume License with Software Assurance can now run their existing Windows Server application licenses on Amazon EC2. There are no associated mobility fees and you have the flexibility to deploy workloads on-premise and on AWS.

Today, at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, we announced this new capability to hundreds of partners (ISVs and SIs) and we invite them to join our Solution Provider Program. If you are an ISV and have migration tools that will help customers migrate their existing deployments, now you can extend your offerings to AWS cloud. If you are a System Integrator offering professional services to customers and specialize in above Microsoft Windows Server applications, we would love to hear from you.

One interesting pattern that we are seeing already with several customers in the pipeline is “diagonal upgrade” – “upgrading” to the cloud as part of their regular software upgrade and migration process. For example, they are upgrading from on-premises MS SharePoint 2007 deployment to MS SharePoint 2010 in the AWS Cloud. They are not only seeing significant cost-savings but also increased business agility and scalability as a result of moving to the cloud.

More information on Microsoft License Mobility and AWS can be found on our website.